Housing and Homes

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend might be interested to read the fine detail of the Green Paper that we launched last month, because it makes the commitment to look into enabling local authorities once more to provide mortgages for local people who may find the mortgage market closed off to them.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman just committed to a policy of permanent discount. Is he aware that lenders generally do not involve themselves in those types of purchase, because they find the perpetual discount is very unattractive on repossession? When we had similar products in the past, such as the price discount covenant, only one or two lenders got involved and they required relatively high deposits.

[John Healey]

I have less concern than the hon. Gentleman about that. I recommend that he read the Green Paper. The point of Labour’s proposal is to create almost a parallel market that is permanently affordable to local people who are in work and on ordinary incomes—the very people the Government are currently failing and to whom the housing market is closed. [Interruption.] I give way to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon). No? I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker. Labour’s policy on home ownership is about first-buy homes, first dibs for local people in all new developments and tightly targeted Help to Buy. That is the real hope that first-time buyers need.

I promised to come back to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) on private renters. Since 2010, the number of households renting privately has gone up by more than a third, and there are now 5 million households renting privately throughout the country. The one thing that we cannot do is see a further slide back to those bad old days around the time of the second world war, when we had private rented housing that was unregulated, overpriced and badly maintained, and it was the only default housing for people earning ordinary incomes. What is needed is very clear: it is Labour’s plan for legal minimum standards, longer tenancies, a cap on rent rises and local licensing to drive out the rogue landlords. They are similar consumer rights that we all expect and all have in other markets, but not in housing.

Finally, the tragedy and unforgiveable scandal of the rising levels of homelessness in this country, particularly of those sleeping rough in the streets, is that we know what works because we have done it before. We did it before when the country was faced with rising homelessness in the early 2000s. Our action as a Government then led the independent Crisis and Joseph Rowntree Foundation homelessness monitor to declare that, by 2009, we had in this country seen what it called an unprecedented decline in homelessness. We back the new Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—we pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for steering it through—but we cannot help the homeless without more homes. I say to the Minister: go beyond the Housing First pilot; consider requiring housing associations to set aside, let us say, 8,000 of their homes across the country so that those with a history of rough sleeping have a low-cost, secure home in which to rebuild their lives; and then help to fund a replacement, like for like, of those homes.

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[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I am going to speak about street homelessness, because what I observed recently in the seven days that I spent living on the streets of London and in my constituency was a very serious problem of accommodation for single men, and particularly single men who are mentally ill.

Twenty-seven years ago I did the same thing for several months, living as a homeless person but also a homeless mentally ill person. Some things were very similar, as we would expect, and some were very different. What was very different this time was that people like the Mayor of London, Westminster City Council and the Prime Minister are at last taking this problem enormously seriously. What was also very different was that, by my reckoning, about 60% of homeless people in London are born overseas. Indeed, when I was camped out in Covent Garden, I was sleeping next to a very nice Italian and Romanian couple. What is the same, though, is that the same mentally ill and drug-addicted people are still roaming the streets of our cities. The kindness of the public and of churches, mosques, gurdwaras and the staff of amazing organisations such as St Mungo’s was also the same.

What I learned this time round is that it is complicated. Each individual has a different reason for being on the streets, and their problem is not primarily homelessness, although of course that is a problem; it is the reason they are homeless that we need to address if we are going to get anywhere. For example, on one night I was camped out behind the goods-in entrance of McDonald’s by Westminster station. I am sure many Members have seen all those people taking this horrendous drug, Spice. I was sleeping next to a young man from the north of England who was an alcoholic, and he had four cans of beer by the time I woke up on the Saturday morning. He showed me the keys to his home, which was somewhere north of London, but was on the streets because he was lonely and an alcoholic.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and it enriches this place to hear the experience of those who have been on the frontline. Does he agree that his experience underlines why we should not jump to conclusions and generalisations about those who are on the streets, but should deal with each case on its merits?

[Adam Holloway]

Absolutely. We have to segment the homeless as much as we can. The Prime Minister has made an extraordinary commitment to end street homelessness within 10 years, but if we are really serious about solving the problem, we have to see people as individuals. We have to differentiate between different groups. We have to accept that some people have made a lifestyle choice. We have to ask whether the large number of foreign nationals really are here looking for work. We have to be honest and have the courage to look at whether the provision of services to homeless people is enabling able-bodied people to live on the streets, where they quickly get into a whole other load of difficulties.

We also need to think about whether public kindness is enabling addiction. The guy I slept next to outside the McDonald’s goods-in entrance got £30 on the Sunday night from kind members of the public, but that was enabling his addiction. Indeed, one of the homeless workers told me after I had finished making the programme that someone they looked after who was a heroin addict and was in a wheelchair, having lost a leg, firmly believed that if the public had not been so kind to him, he would have sought treatment a lot earlier, but he was able to continue with his addiction because of that kindness from the public.

We also need to accept that we cannot add to our population year after year and not build new homes and not expect that to have some knock-on effect on the people at the very bottom. We also have to accept the impact of the cost of housing. I was sleeping in the doorway of a shop on Tottenham Court Road, and two or three of the people there were actually going off to work, but they slept there because they would rather not, and probably could not, afford to spend £1,000 a month on housing. We need to look at whether, by lumping everyone together, we are making it harder for people who are in the direst need. Most of all, in this welfare state of ours, we need to try to rescue the people at the very bottom from roaming the streets of our cities.

I am making a brief speech because I had a Westminster Hall debate on this subject recently, and others wish to speak. We need to look at the root causes of homelessness, look at each individual and rapidly intervene when they need it, for the mentally ill and the drug addicted, otherwise we will get nowhere.

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell).

Instead of looking at the broader policy, I will focus on a specific constituency case. Although planning is generally the key responsibility of the planning authority—in my case, Babergh District Council in South Suffolk—this is an issue for Parliament because it concerns a loophole in retrospective planning that has caused great distress to my constituents Clare and James Frewin of the village of Bures St Mary. I was councillor for Bures St Mary before I became an MP in 2015, and the last planning application that came before me—to which I objected—was an application to build six houses on a former slaughterhouse behind the Frewins’ grade II listed property on a very steep hill in the village of Bures.

As the development has gone on, it has become very clear that these properties, which are built just behind the my constituents’ back garden, are far higher than was given permission for. In fact, in January this year, the developer himself, Mr Steve Dixon of the Stemar Group from Southend, confirmed that there was a height difference of at least 1.7 metres. My constituents then commissioned an independent survey from Randall Surveys LLP, which found that the height difference was in fact 2.6 metres. That is the same as one floor of an entire residential property. Imagine, Mr Speaker, that someone is building a house behind your back garden, where your family enjoy their time, that is almost 3 metres taller than they were given planning permission for.

The key thing is that all we can do in this situation is ask the council to request that the developer seek retrospective planning permission. It is true that in theory the council could put a stop notice on the development, but the problem there is that if the developer gets planning permission, they can sue for any damages resulting from the stop notice. Obviously, therefore, the council is very reluctant to use it.

In this case, the real problem is that the developer in question simply does not give a damn about my constituents. In fact, he has been extremely aggressive with them. He has trespassed on the Frewins’ property. He has told Clare Frewin—this was overheard by another constituent—“If you had as much money as me, you would not live around here,” and he described the village as “scum”. Actually, Bures is a very beautiful village on the Suffolk-Essex borders, so I do not know what this builder from Southend understands by beauty. Imagine being in my constituents’ shoes, Mr Speaker. They have this development behind them that they did not want. They have to accept that it has been approved. It is being built far higher than the builder was given permission for, and he just carries on building it. He ignores all their concerns. He does not engage with the local community but rides roughshod over them.

We in Parliament have not given the district authority the right powers to deal with that, because it can itself be liable to legal action. I would like to see some kind of review of retrospective planning permission, so that where the developer is clearly causing detriment against the public interest, a stop notice can be issued. It could be appealed against, but whether it was upheld or even rejected, the builder would not have the right then to sue the council for damages, because it had acted in the public interest.

This case has caused great dismay in Bures and across South Suffolk. The impression given is that the system is weighted firmly in favour of the developer, who cares not a jot for my constituents. I want a system that better represents my constituents, so that they are not subject to people riding roughshod over them with planning permission they have been legally given. Instead, we should have a system that is weighted fairly between both sides of the argument.